Beautiful Darkness(105)

Freedom — that's what sparrows meant to a Caster.

All along I thought she was trying to be free from me, but really she was trying to set me free. As if loving her was a cage I couldn't escape.

I closed the notebook. It hurt too much to read it, especially when Lena was so far away, in all the ways that mattered.

A few feet away, Ridley was still staring blankly into the Mortal stars. For the first time, we saw the same sky.

Liv was wedged between two roots, with me on one side and Link on the other. After I found out the truth about what happened on Lena's birthday, I guess I expected my feelings for Liv to disappear. But even now I found myself wondering. If things were different, if I had never met Lena, if I had never met Liv …

I spent the next few hours watching Liv. When she slept, she looked peaceful, beautiful. Not Lena's kind of beautiful, something different. She looked content — like a sunny day, a cold glass of milk, an unopened book before you cracked the binding. There was nothing tortured about her. She looked the way I wanted to feel.

Mortal. Hopeful. Alive.

When I finally drifted off, I felt that way, just for a minute….





Lena was shaking me. “Wake up, Sleepyhead. We have to talk.” I smiled and pulled her into my arms. I tried to kiss her, but she laughed and ducked away. “This isn't that kind of a dream.”

I sat up and looked around. We were in Macon's bed in the Tunnels. “All my dreams are that kind of dream, L. I'm almost seventeen.”

“This is my dream, not yours. And I've only been sixteen for four months.”

“Won't Macon be mad if we're here?”

“Macon's dead, don't you remember? You must really be asleep.” She was right. I had forgotten everything, and now it all came crashing back. Macon was gone. The trade.

And Lena had left me, only she hadn't. She was here.

“So this is a dream?” I was trying to keep my stomach from twisting with loss, the guilt of everything I'd done, everything I owed her.

Lena nodded.

“Am I dreaming you, or are you dreaming me?”

“Does it ever make a difference, when it comes to us?” She was avoiding the question.

I tried again. “When I wake up, will you be gone?”

“Yes. But I had to see you. This was the only way for us to really talk.” She was wearing a white T-shirt, one of my oldest, softest ones. She looked tousled and beautiful, in the way I loved best, when she thought she looked the worst.

I put my hands around her waist and pulled her close. “L, I saw my mom. She told me about Macon. I think she loved him.”

“They loved each other. I've seen the visions, too.” So our connection was still there. I felt a wave of relief.

“They were like us, Lena.”

“And they couldn't be together. Like us.”

It was a dream, I was sure of it. Because we could speak these terrible truths with a strange remove, as if they were happening to other people. She rested her head on my chest, picking mud off my shirt with her fingers. How had my shirt gotten so muddy? I tried to remember but couldn't.

“What are we going to do, L?”

“I don't know, Ethan. I'm scared.”

“What do you want?”

“You,” she whispered.

“So why is it so hard?”

“We're all wrong. Everything's all wrong when I'm with you.”

“Does this feel wrong?” I held her tighter.

“No. But how I feel doesn't matter anymore.” I felt her sigh against my chest.

“Who told you that?”

“No one had to tell me.” I stared into her eyes. They were still gold.

“You can't go to the Great Barrier. You have to come back.”

“I can't stop now. I have to see how it ends.”

I played with a strand of her curling black hair. “Why didn't you have to see how it ended with us?”

She smiled and touched my face. “Because now I know how it ends with you.”

“How does it end?”

“Like this.” She bent over and kissed me, and her hair fell around my face like rain. I pulled up the covers, and she climbed beneath them, folding into my arms. As we kissed, I felt the heat of her touch. We tumbled in the bed. I was on top of her, then she was on top of me. The heat intensified to the point where I couldn't breathe. I thought my skin was on fire, and when I broke away from her kiss, it was.

We were both on fire, surrounded by flames that rose higher than we could see, and the bed wasn't a bed at all but a stone slab. It was burning all around us, the yellow flames of Sarafine's fire.

Lena screamed and clung to me. I looked down from where we were, on top of the massive pyramid of splintered trees. There was a strange circle chiseled into the stone we were lying on, some kind of Dark Caster symbol.

“Lena, wake up! This isn't you. You didn't kill Macon. You're not going Dark. It was the Book. Amma told me everything.”

The pyre had been for us, not Sarafine. I could hear her laughing — or was it Lena? I couldn't tell the difference anymore. “L, listen to me! You don't have to do this —”

Lena was screaming. She couldn't stop screaming.